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By speculative, I mean mostly science fiction, fantasy or intrigue. For example Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which is a 900-page book, goes well past the 200-page mark before the central conflict be...
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T02:10:51Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/4954 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
HNL
·
2019-12-08T02:10:51Z (almost 5 years ago)
By speculative, I mean mostly science fiction, fantasy or intrigue. For example Neal Stephenson's _[Anathem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem)_, which is a 900-page book, goes well past the 200-page mark before the central conflict begins to take form. Works such as these have universes that need to be explained to the reader before the story proper can begin, but does this sort of thing cause the reader to lose interest? More specifically, in my case, if the villain is still hidden 100 pages into a 300-page book, will it bore the reader? Note that there may be many small incidents and disasters, and other characters may be searching for answers, but the overarching conflict is toward the middle of the book.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2012-02-05T05:17:47Z (over 12 years ago)
Original score: 12